


Casting Off

by Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Family, Gen, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-07
Updated: 2010-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-11 13:49:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the <a href="http://yeomanrand.livejournal.com/20839.html">first line</a> "As she watched the ISS <i>Kelvin</i> dissolve in her viewscreen, all Winona Kirk could think was <i>Thank God</i>."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casting Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



> Canon character death. Thanks to jouissant for the first line. The first line thing is also somewhere on my Dreamwidth. Read over by shinychimera but not really betaed, so all mistakes are mine.

As she watched the ISS _Kelvin_ dissolve in her viewscreen, all Winona Kirk could think was _Thank God_. She closed her eyes and let the tears flow -- let the physicians and nurses think labor was enough to bring her to tears. More fools they.

No, she wept for the weight of the healthy squalling infant in the crook of her elbow and for the sudden lightness of _freedom_, however illusory. Not from George -- from his family.

And George had known. He hadn't had to sacrifice himself, though if he hadn't she knows the mad minds behind that ship of knives would probably have killed them all. But with his death she could take her boys and they could lose themselves on some backwater colony, somewhere the long arm of the Kirks couldn't be bothered to reach, even for the children of their first son.

But she would have to act quickly to maintain the separation; she could sacrifice George Samuel as his father had sacrificed himself, not go back for him, keep only the infant in her arms but losing any small member of her own family would be unacceptable.

And she wasn't strong enough to commandeer the shuttle, anyway. Not so soon after prematurely giving birth.

_Tiberius, are you kidding me? No, that's the worst. Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him Jim._

So many hidden layers, the ways they'd learned to talk to each other only after they'd married, because before then they hadn't needed to hide anything but their relationship. Afterward, in the middle of the in-laws who hated her for her brilliance and her lack of useful political connections, they'd learned to code even so simple and necessary a phrase as "I love you."

She would keep Tiberius as a reminder, of course, to herself for who her sons could have been. And because James Tiberius Kirk was a good name, a strong name.

She opened dry eyes. The _Kelvin_ was long gone, the black ship adrift. But her new anchor had finally settled in to nurse, and she refused to be haunted by the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [where_no_woman](http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/161375.html) on LiveJournal.


End file.
